The Stone Soup Leadership Institute
Performance Metrics: Pilot @ Youth Leadership Summit 2015
The Stone Soup Leadership Institute is developing a new Performance Metrics. We developed the Inquiry Form with MVYLI’s Emerging Leader Charlotte McCarron and Mary Ollen. We piloted it at the Institute’s 11th Youth Leadership Summit for Sustainable Development to help assess what they learned during this weeklong Summit. Youth delegates from Martha’s Vineyard and two Hawaii Islands took the test before and after the Summit. We were impressed to discover how much these youth delegates in just one week.
The Inquiry Form outlined 8 categories: Personal Confidence, Social Awareness, Life Planning, Communication, Leadership, Community Service, and Global Awareness. Youth were asked to respond to a series of questions on scale of 1 to 10. We also asked what for their GPA to help assess academic success.
The Performance Metrics form is a living document that continues to evolve with each evaluation process.
- Overall scores rose by 116 points.
- Average increase in scores was 10.5 points.
- The most dramatic increases: Leadership, Communication, Personal Confidence and Community.
- Lucy (16): Leadership score rose by 4.5 points.
- Bella (17): Personal Confidence score rose by 4 points.
- Lauryn (16): Personal Confidence increased by 5 points; Global Awareness increased by 3 points.
- Jack (14): Leadership score rose by 4.5 points; Community Awareness score rose 5 points.
His overall score increased by an impressive 16.5 points.
- Arden (17): Leadership score rose by 9.5 points; Personal Confidence score increased by 5 points.
Her overall score increased by a remarkable 19.5 points.
- Patrick (17): Leadership score rose by 10 points; Communication: 4 points. Personal Confidence: by 5 points.
His overall total score rose by an impressive 27 points.
Summary
These quantitative numbers were matched by qualitative information from essays written by youth delegates about their experiences. “The Summit was such an enlightening, heartening experience,” said Willa Vigneault. “Never in one place had I seen such a large gathering of teenagers so dedicated to making a difference in the world. And never before had I been so inspired to push myself for the good of others and the good of others and for the good of the environment. And never before had I been so determined to succeed.”
Each improved score means a young person is closer to making their dreams for their life, their island and the world a reality. If The Stone Soup Leadership Institute can inspire this kind of change in a handful of young people over the course of a week, imagine what it could do from a global learning platform. The Institute’s Performance Metrics outcomes showed us that our strengths were in bolstering leadership and communications skills, raising personal confidence levels and increasing community awareness. The outcomes also showed that we could make improvements in the areas of life planning and social and global awareness. We are continuing to refine the Performance Metrics as an assessment tool. The latest version has expanded the personal confidence and communication sections, slightly changed some wording, and added questions about academic success. It is part of an on-going process of marrying social emotional learning and more traditional leadership skills training. This approach is bringing us to the forefront of learning for the 21st century.
Twenty-first century skills are broadly described as Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Innovation. Specifically, there is a multiplicity of literacies, and a complex, interconnected toolbox of both social and academic skills that many feel necessary for success. Kevin McGrath’s 21st Century Learning Commons Library
